Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines surveying as "a branch of applied mathematics that teaches the art of determining the area
of any portion of the earth's surface, the lengths and directions of the bounding lines, and the contour of the surface and of accurately delineating the
whole on paper".

The Colorado Revised Statues defines
Professional land surveying as "the application of special knowledge of principles of mathematics,
methods of measurement, and law for the determination and preservation of land boundaries . . . including restoration and rehabilitation of corners and
boundaries in the united states (sic) public land survey system; obtaining and evaluating boundary evidence; determination of the areas and elevations
of land parcels; measuring and platting underground mine workings; preparation of the boundary control portions of geographic and land information systems;
establishment, restoration, and rehabilitation of land survey monuments and survey reports; surveying monuments and platting of
easements and rights-of-ways; and geodetic surveying."

A surveyor travels to the property and analyzes it with respect to it's surroundings. Most of the time, he will use equipment to
measure the distances of various objects on the property, research the county courthouse for legal descriptions and recorded drawings of the property,
interprets the data, and draws a sketch of the property on a sheet of paper. While geometry and trigonometry are important knowledge for a surveyor, he also
must be fluent in the local laws and court rulings concerning property transactions and rights.

The survey that the surveyor produces, while highly accurate, is considered as an approximation of the property's boundary and it's
topography in the court system. A surveyor does not grant land, only the courts can grant land to an individual, but the surveyor's knowledge of the
property is used by the courts in determining the property's boundary.

According to Wilhelm Schmidt
in an article printed in Professional Surveying Magazine, surveying is an art because it is a process of
making something while using instruments. The surveyor's instruments are his mathematical knowledge of geometry and trigonometry along with
the electronic measuring devices, chains, and compasses to produce a survey of the property. A surveyor learns the mathematical principles under the
sterilized, textbook world of a university and then apply his knowledge to the real world where nothing corresponds to the standard "rules" learned in
school.

Schmidt believes that the artistic part of surveying lies in the surveyor's decisions in choosing the equipment, mathematical principles,
past surveys, and legal descriptions to achieve a high degree of accuracy while making sense out the chaos of life. A surveyor must deal with monuments
located in the wrong place or destroyed. He must make decisions based on unreadable plats or recorded legal descriptions with typographical
or mathematical errors while basing his survey on a fence line that may or may not of moved since the last survey of the property in the early 1900's.
Surveying is very much an art based on the interpretation of historical fact.

GPS (Global Positioning Satellites) is quickly becoming one of the more frequently used surveying instruments today. With GPS, a surveyor
can cover more ground in less time than more conventional methods. However, there are risks associated with GPS if not used correctly.

Gamba and Associates, like most surveyors who
use global positioning satellites, rely primarily on differential GPS for our GPS surveying needs.
Differential GPS
uses a base receiver at a known and previously checked control point, often a government monument, and a roaming receiver or rover. The base receiver and rover
record concurrent satellite data which is used to determine the
rover's position relative to the base.
The base and the rover are connected via a radio modem allowing instant access to location information at the rover.

GPS accuracy
is dependent on numerous factors including tree canopy, number of satellites available to the receiver, and ionosphere and sun spot activity,
but the average accuracy of differential GPS is 1 cm (0.394 inches) plus 1 ppm for horizontal measurements and 2 cm (0.787 inches) plus 1 ppm
for vertical measurements. It should be noted that these accuracies are only achieved with survey level differential GPS units and not a
common hand held unit purchased at the store. The documentation accompanying the hand held unit should address the accuracies of that
particular unit.

As mentioned above, GPS surveying has to be used correctly and is sometimes limited in it's application. Since GPS surveying
relies on the ability to use satellites, one must be able to "see" enough of the sky to collect data from a minimum of four satellites at the
same time. Areas with dense overhead vegetation (i.e. trees) or with steep adjacent hillsides, all of which block the view of the sky, often
are not suitable areas for GPS surveying and other techniques must be utilized.

NOAA's National Geodetic Survey (NGS)
defines and manages a national coordinate system. This network, the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS), provides the foundation for transportation
and communication; mapping and charting; and a multitude of scientific and engineering applications.